Title: Dealing with the Devil 2/?
Author: Grevola
Rating: PG
Notes: Don't own GW or HP. Part of the Sorting Hat Arc.

-_-_-_-

Lunchtime on Friday found Duo cornered in an abandoned classroom and hoping he would live to see the weekend. It had not been a good week.

First there was the fiasco in Care of Magical Creatures with the freaky, smelly turkey-horses, and that was hardly his fault. He hadn't wanted to go talk to the damn hippogriff, he had wanted to stay safely outside the padlock, or maybe even in Hagrid's hut, or better yet back in the castle in the dungeons. But no, Trowa wanted to go pet "The pretty fluffy horsey-kins", so of course Quatre was going too. And if Quatre decided it was cool, Draco wouldn't be more than a step behind. And there was no way Duo was going to get caught alone with Zabini if he could help it, so he really hadn't had a choice about approaching the damn creatures. And when the bloody thing attacked him, he certainly hadn't expected Draco to distract the hippogriff and get his arm cut up.

As if all that weren't bad enough, he'd had to spend several days cooped up in the hospital wing with Draco, just because the snotty blond hadn't wanted to go right back to lessons. And of course, after the second time some poor first year delivered their lessons to their sick bed, Draco decided the whole thing wasn't just Duo's fault but had some how become his idea as well. Duo would have been happy with an extra larger plaster and a note out of the afternoon Charms lesson. But no, when Lucious Malfoy had insisted Draco take it easy for a full week, he'd gotten the treatment too because "Hippogriffs leave such nasty, easily infected wounds, and they are only small boys." Duo had a hunch that Mr. Malfoy knew he would hate being laid up much more than going to class, and took extra delight in arranging the whole thing because of it.

Then there had been Defense Against the Dark Arts on Friday morning. Duo was still pretty sure that one wasn't his fault. No, that screw up belonged entirely to shabby Professor Lupin. First he'd held the class in some out of the way storage closet barely big enough to fit everyone. Then he'd thought it would be a brilliant idea to put everyone's worst fear on display for the judgement of their peers. Maybe laughing at the most terrifying thing you can think of was how Gryffindors got their jollies, but Slytherin house tended to look on fear as a sign of weakness. And having your biggest weakness paraded in front of a bunch of self-interested, back-stabbing, power-mongering thirteen year olds is not what anyone wants to do first thing in the morning.

There were only two people in the entire class who hadn't seemed upset by the whole thing. Quatre Winner, because his boggart was a tall, brown haired man yelling in Arabic, so no one knew what that was all about, and Blaise Zabini because he could manage a derisive laugh at anything. Everyone else had left the class in a horrible mood, and eyeing each other with deep suspicion, knowing that what their boggarts revealed would be used against them by their house mates at the first suitable opportunity. And of course, Trowa had been asked to stay behind after class and this was some how Duo's fault, never mind Professor Lupin had wanted the braided boy to hang back as well.

So, after one of the worst lessons of his life, Duo got to spend a mildly terrifying ten minutes being silently menaced by Trowa while they waited for their Defense teacher to arrive. Of course he'd asked them to stay back, and then remembered he had to go rush off to another room to get something, or do something immediately. Duo had been slouched in a seat in the classroom long enough for his butt to go numb before the door at the far end of the room finally opened. But it wasn't Professor Lupin who stepped into the room. It was Hiiro Yui. The messy haired Gryffindor indicated that Trowa should go on through the way he came to talk to their teacher. Apparently they were doing some sort of one on one interview. Or something. Duo wondered if this was going to wind up being his fault too.

Hiiro completely ignored Duo until Trowa had shut the door behind himself. Then the Japanese student settled in a seat at Duo's side.

"You are here to see Professor Lupin?" He asked.

Duo nodded, "Yeah. Is that what you were doing?"

Hiiro nodded, "Yes. He wanted to speak with me about my boggart. It caused some disruption- I believe you would have enjoyed the chaos."

"Huh, no way," Duo said, "we had our boggart lesson this morning. It was awful."

"I did not think you would be easily scared," Hiiro frowned, "Not even the Bloody Baron frightens you much."

"Yeah, well. He's not my ghost, is he?" Duo slouched down further in his chair with his arms crossed and his expression dark. "How did your boggart cause trouble? Did it attack the other students, or try to start a riot?"

"It was not so violent," Hiiro said. A long silence stretched between them as Hiiro waited, first for Duo to make some kind of joke, and then for Duo to say anything at all. At last he gave up, realizing his friend's expression had only become darker. "Your boggart did not cause a riot?"

"Damn near," he muttered.

"Duo?" Concern colored Hiiro's voice. But before Duo answered, the door at the far end of the class room slammed open and Trowa stormed past them, his back straight and his face scowling.

Lupin was standing in the doorway, watching him leave, looking more worn out and resigned than usual. "Not my brightest idea," he mused before addressing the two boys in the room, "I see you're still here Hiiro. Do you mind if I borrow Duo for a moment? I'm sure you can appreciate this is a somewhat personal topic." He frowned again, "Unless, of course, you'd like him to be there Duo?"

Duo just shrugged, "Yeah sure, whatever. He can stay. What's all this about, prof?"

Lupin pulled a chair from one of the desks in the row ahead of the boys, and settled in it backwards, "As I'm sure you've guessed, I wanted to speak with you a bit about your boggart Duo."

"It wasn't my fault."

Lupin shook his head, "Of course not. None of us can control what a boggart turns into. And you did handle the incident rather well. But I'm afraid that, between your reaction to the boggart and the dementor, I'm forced to draw some difficult conclusions about you, and your, er, childhood."

"You know what they say about people who assume," Duo snapped. Hiiro was certain that Professor Lupin would soon lose patience with his friend, much as most teachers quickly did. But instead the rather worn looking man just nodded.

"Indeed I do. Which is why I wanted to speak with you. There are a handful of students who have asked me to work with them on particular problems that have cropped up this year. Either learning to summon a patronus and banish a dementor, or learning alternative ways of dealing with boggarts. I have already spoken about this with Hiiro, and I wanted to extend the same offer to you."

Duo snorted and looked away, "So what, my boggart causes a panic and now I have to take remedial Defense Against the Dark Arts? Snape's already got me on extra Potions!"

"Hardly," Lupin hurried to stop Duo's building rant. "Some of the professors think I am very foolish to offer you these lessons. However, I thought you might like a chance to take control of situations like those with the boggart or the dementors. The choice take me up on the offer is entirely up to you."

Duo frowned at him again, "What about you, Hiiro, you takin' extra lessons with Professor Loopy?"

Hiiro frowned at his friend's rudeness. "I had not decided," he said at last.

"You do not need make a choice right now," Professor Lupin said, standing up, "the offer is open to you as long as I am a teacher here. And my door is always open for you, Duo, even if you just wish to talk."

Duo was quietly sullen for a bit longer, and eventually the teacher collected his battered briefcase and began to head out of the classroom. Just as he reached the doorway, Duo called after him, "Hey Prof?"
"Yes Duo?"

"You can teach me to stick it to those dementors?"

"I can show you the technique, it would be up to you to master it."

Duo nodded, "Okay. Teach me that."

Professor Lupin nodded, "Very well. Then meet me in my office Thursday evening after dinner. You may, of course, bring your friend." And then the teacher nodded to both students and took his leave.

Hiiro felt somewhat uncomfortable, having played spectator to what should have been a private conversation for reasons he didn't understand. The room was quiet for a long minute after Lupin left, and then Duo stood up and turned away from Hiiro. He walked to the front of the room and began drawing abstract shapes on the chalk board.

"Know what my boggart was?" He asked, but he didn't wait for Hiiro to answer, "When the boggart jumped out at me the whole room went black. Totally, blindingly black. And quiet. So quiet you could only hear yourself breathe. Then people tried to move around and started crashing into things. But you couldn't see what was going on, you couldn't hear their voices... Took it a while for someone to get the boggart's attention, but Trowa finally stumbled in front of it. By then everyone was pretty much panicking. And then his boggart..." Duo shuddered, "He turned it into a circus clown, but of course that's Pansey Perkinson's worst fear, so then she was really screaming..." He made a particularly vicious gesture, and the chalk screeched and broke in his hand. "And some how that's all my fault. Zabini's twisted ankle, Pansey's mascara, Trowa's boggart nearly killing us all... That's some how my fault! As if I walked up to Loony Lupin and said 'Hey, know what'd be wicked? If we gave the whole house a huge panic attack, whadda ya say?'"

Hiiro wasn't sure what to say. He went and stood by Duo, toying with his own piece of chalk. Absently he began drawing five-pointed summoning diagrams on the board. "My boggart was Harry Potter."
"Potter?!" Duo dropped his chalk, "What's so scary about Potter? Did he threaten to make you wear those horrible glasses of his or something?"

"He was dead. It was a surprise for me, but the students became quite upset. Professor Lupin even more than the students, I think." He drew the elemental signs at the points of the star.

Duo was staring at Hiiro open mouthed and wide eyed."You're biggest fear is Harry "I'm special because I didn't kick it" Potter dead?! Talk about irrational!"

"Shut up," Hiiro snapped, "Harry is special. Important!"

Duo stared at Hiiro for a few moments before a light seemed to go on in his eyes. Then he slapped Hiiro on the shoulder and began to laugh so hard he almost couldn't stand upright, "You've got a crush on him, haven't you?" he howled, "You fancy Harry Potter!"

"I do not!" Hiiro snapped, but it was no use.

Duo had leaned against the chalk board to hold himself up, and was slowly sliding down, giggling, "Hiiro Yui fancies Harry Potter! It's too much!"

And it was too much, because Duo's laughter was enough to attract the attention of Peeves the poltergeist. He floated into the class room through one door and then out the other, ignoring Hiiro's protests that Duo had completely misinterpreted what he was saying. Instead, Peeves picked up on Duo's cry and chanted "Harry's Hiiro's hero! Harry's Hiiro's crush! Harry's Hiiro's hero! Hiiro is in love!" all down the halls of the school.